Cold Storage

Cirr gave Ben a look that said he'd talk it out later. Which was probably good for Ben because his first instinct was to punt the faint-hearted pilot through a bulkhead for all the trouble he caused. Cirr erred on the side of being a nice guy.

He turned his attention to the formerly-frozen alien.

"We'rre on a shjip dead jin space. We can talk thjis out herre and rrjisk losjing what ljittle ajirr we've got, orr we can get you to safety and you can kvetch to yourr hearrt's content. Pjick carrefully."

Hal squinted again, this time having slightly better aim as he gazed directly at Cirr's nose. "That accent. Are you a Cizerack?" he asked. It was a stupid question. Of course Cirrsseeto was a Cizerack, no one else would ever choose to talk like that.

But, more importantly, this Cizerack wasn't trying to kill him, so that already made him one of the better members of his race that Hal had ever come across. "Safety now, kvetching later, got it," he nodded.

Ben didn't like Cirr's look. It meant Cirr wasn't happy with him, or at least was annoyed. And Cirr was a lot like a Wookiee in that regard: no matter how right you actually are, you don't want to get a Wookiee angry. You wouldn't like what Wookiees do when they get angry.

He kicked off a crate, and ignored the echoing sounds within the hold as he affixed his helmet to his head and pointed the torch out the pair of blast doors he and Sindy had used to enter.

"We need to hold on a second anyway. There's no pressure outside those blast doors. We need to get another vac suit from the ship, unless there happens to be one in working condition in here, somewhere."

Ben turned around and looked at the humanoid-ish being and sighed.

"You wouldn't know if there is one in here, would ya?"

"I don't even know where here is, pal," Hal replied. The annoyance in his voice began to show not only in his face, but in his body as well. His tail flicked like an irritated cat, and his ears began to flatten just slightly.

"I remember having breakfast, and then I wake up here with a hangover from hell, and I can't see a damn thing," he elaborated. "So, no, if there is an extra vac-suit here, I have no idea where it might be. I don't even know where my outer robes went; I swear I was wearing them when I left the Temple, this morning."

The Nehantite stopped abruptly, then squeezed his right eye shut and blinked his left. "Woah, that's better, getting a bit more definition, now," he said, looking his new companions over once more. They were still out of focus, but at least he could tell what was a hand and what was a head, now. "Why not just use your universal docking shaft to connect to this ship? Wouldn't need a vac-suit, then," he suggested, not realizing that there was no atmosphere outside the hold, or that the ship he was on had several large holes punched in it by weapons fire. He also didn't realize he had a cowlick in his hair as a result of the unfreezing process, but that isn't quite as consequential to the matter at hand.

"Why not just use your universal docking shaft to connect to this ship? Wouldn't need a vac-suit, then."

Sindy shook her head. As much as her curiosity had ratcheded up times at least a thousand, there was promise of being able to bombard the yellow-haired Nehantite with all sorts of queries once they were back in the... well, more-comfortable-than-here confines of the Skipper.

"No, can't do that. There's integrity only in some areas of this vessel. Unfortunately, one of those areas just so happens to not be outside the nearby blast doors."

She unclipped the torch from the vac suit belt and turned her torso only, shining the light back toward where she'd left the helmet floating about. Spotting it nearly in the exact spot she left it, she turned back to the assembled persons and lowered the aim of the torch to the deck. She then pointed the torch at Ben, taking a modicum of care to not point it directly in his face.

"You've got your helmet on, so I voluntell you to go grab another suit." She declared, one corner of her mouth upturned. "Since, you know, it was your idea in the first place."

Cirr, growing ever impatient, scanned the room for something - anything that could work as a vacuum-safe option. He bounded to a far wall, examined a cargo container, punched the controls, and it's door opened, giving a tell-tale airtight hiss.

"That'll do."

With a heave, he upended the container, spilling its contents in the zero gravity room. With the box empty, he again reached for the Nehantite.

"Get jin"

...and proceeded to stuff him unceremoniously into the box.

"Hey!" Hal shouted. Protesting as best he could, the mongoose struggled not to be stuffed into what might well become his coffin. But despite his attempts to wrench out of the Cizerack's grasp, his body was still weak from so long in carbonite, and in the end he wound up hunched in the crate, his voice silenced as the lid swung shut and the clasps locked.

"Great. Now I'm in a box. What else can go wrong?" he grumbled. His eyes, however, were grateful for the darkness as they continued to heal from the freezing process. Thumping himself against the lid, he then realized that now that the box was sealed, he only had limited air, so he switched from struggle to self-preservation by holding his breath as long as possible.

And, as another part of him woke up from the deep freeze, he realized that he also had to go to the bathroom.

At the sound of 'get in', followed by scuffling and strenuous disagreement, Sindy lowered the torch from Ben, waving a 'never mind' at him with her other free hand as she turned her head to look at just what was going on.

"Or... we can do that." She mused at a low volume, then taking the opportunity to go fetch her helmet before the apparently short-tempered Cizerack bulldozed his way out, crate in hand. Sindy sighed, the fact that she wasn't quite used to this particular brand of hullabaloo finally setting in. Feeling only slightly defeated that just about anything she'd attempted to do to be useful had gone quashed or ignored completely, she made her way back to the ship to get herself out of the suddenly very restrictive-feeling vacsuit.

----------------------------

Back on the Skipper...

Siyndacha Aerin wasted no time in freeing herself of the vacsuit, and in short order was combing through her hair with her fingers and getting in the mindset of setting herself up with a little something to tinker with. Far be it for her to be without a little project in the knapsack and other small bag she had brought with her to whittle the hours away. There was otherwise a long, capped off tube that rounded out her few possessions that there honestly wasn't a suitable place on this vessel to spread out the contents of unless she were to consider the deck an option.

Ben had rid himself of the vac-suit on her heels and Cirr made haste in getting off the dead Rostelana and onboard with the rest of their small group. He had set the crate containing the carbonite-weary Nehantite and seemed to be almost considering whether or not to let the mongoose-like creature out. At least from the shorter blonde girl's point-of-view, that appeared to be the case. She seated herself on the deck with the small bag and began digging through it, lifting her eyes what seemed like every two seconds to see if the Cizerack had yet made up his mind. It seemed like an eternity to her (in reality, it was a minute, maybe two) and she started to feel concerned for the Nehantite. Having found what she was looking for in the bag, she used it to point at the crate while her eyes looked at Cirr, her eyebrows knit in concern.

"You gonna open that?" She queried, waving what appeared to be a battered ol' lightsaber hilt at the box. "That can't be comfortable."

Now aboard a ship with power, lighting, and a recycling life support system, Cirr seemed to relax a little. Without the luxury of de-suiting, he still bore a bit of discomfort until they linked up with his frigate, but at least he wasn't looking the prospect of gasping in a hard vacuum in the face.

Speaking of gasping...

"Rrjight."

...he quickly opened the hatch on the cargo container, hoisting the alien out.

"Easy now, easy."

Finding the nearest seat, he deposited the Nehantite in it, and leaned against the wall.

"Ben, now that you've fjigurred out jI'm not trryjing to kjill you, do you mjind headjing back to my shjip?"

"Yeah, well, maybe you could have been kind enough to hail us before the whole tractor beam incident," Ben shot back, managing to sound more shaken than confrontational. Even so, he started toward the cockpit. "I just got this ship. What would you have done?"

With a sigh of relief as he sat in the pilot's seat, he deftly detached dorsal hatch and moved away from the ill-fated ship, towards the cruisaer that Cirrus had so scared him before.

As Ben (bravely) moved to dock with his former attacker, Cirr stepped forward, opening comm lines to his frigate.

"Novgorrod thjis jis Captajin Raurrsatta, prreparre forr dockjing prrotocol."

The marauder corvette adjusted her orientation, allowing access to the airlock port along her starboard profile. Cirr watched as Ben's sure-handed approach guided the runabout gracefully alongside, and the umbilical connected the ships perfectly.

"Novgorod to runabout, docking procedure complete. Welcome aboard." The crewer on the frigate monotoned his terse military protocols, and closed the channel as the light turned green, signalling much the same.

Small places are good places, small places are good places. Those five words ran nonstop through Halajiin's mind. Only by focusing on them, believing them to be true could he manage to keep himself from going mad and kicking, bashing and beating the crate open in an attempt to get out. Small places were the worst kind of places to the Nehantite, whose claustrophobia had jeopardized portions of his training, and had mostly come from being stuffed in lockers back when he was in school as a boy.

But a shipping crate is no locker. Lockers have vents; there was air to breathe and if you rammed your shoulder into the door hard enough, you could eventually break the lock. In his box he could already feel his air growing thin long before the gravity returned, but still he held each breath as long as he could. When at last he heard the hiss of the seals breaking and his eyes squinted at the reintroduction of light, Hal gulped for air, breathing in thick, heavy mouthfuls of it. And, while he typically would have said "Hands off, Mr. Grabby!" to Cirr, he was more than willing to be out of that box by any means. Even being deposited in a chair was better than in the box. Eating nothing but mushrooms for the rest of his life would be better than the box. Heck, deep-kissing a Hutt would be better than being in the box, metal bikini and all.

Ugh, why did his mind go there? Shaking his head to clear that absolutely terrible mental image, the Nehantite blinked and tried to focus his eyes once more. Most all the blurriness had now gone, but color seemed to be eluding him, and for all the modernity of Ben's new ship, seeing everything in black and white made it still feel like watching an old-timey holofilm. Seriously, whoever he was going to meet at that diner that morning was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

But now, now he was being ignored again. Funny, this crew went through all the effort to get him and being him back, just to ignore him. It almost seemed as if they weren't a rescue team at all. That couldn't be true, though, as the female had mentioned something about being a Jedi, so that meant that the Council had to have sent these other two along with her. Right? Well if that was true, why hadn't they unlocked his wrists and made sure he was okay? Glancing down at his manacles, Hal sighed. Thick metal with reinforced cabling, they were designed to be very difficult to remove, indeed. Whoever had captured him certainly meant to hold him for some time. Probably at least a few days. Thankfully his paws were at least bound in front, so he decided that as long as he was being ignored, he'd go find the head and take a leak.

By the time the remembered he was even there, he'd probably be back in his seat.

Probably.

"Captain?!" Ben yelped, even as the Skipper settled next to the Marauder class cruiser. The umbilical tube extended, and once again, Ben was docking with a ship. This time, though, it was a warship.

"I don't know which one I like worse," Ben murmured, conveniently forgetting his earlier assertions of 'cake' (apparently, the cake was a lie). He turned to look into the compartment behind him, and noticed something. "Hey, is our mystery passenger still in that box?"

The mystery passenger was most certainly not in his box any longer. Instead he was in another box, head tilted back and breathing a great sigh of relief as he... relieved himself in the ship's head. A quick flush, a quick, wash of his paws, and then it was out to go find the galley. After all, even if he was a prisoner, it was against Republic laws to deny a prisoner a meal.

And by Hal's estimates, he was owed two meals, as it had to be at least ten hours since he had breakfast, by his stomach's reckoning. Maybe a bit longer, actually.

"No, Ben. He's out of the box." She called back, stuffing the beat-up lightsaber hilt back into her small bag and sealing the bag up again. After toting the bag to be with her her other possessions, Sindy opted to find out for herself what the former occupant of the crate was up to, seeing as he was no longer in the seat in which the Captain (for it was simpler to pronounce than whatever actual name he had) had placed him.

Sindy made her way by the lav, running her fingers along the inches of the bulkhead as she passed from the lav to the galley, which is precisely where she found him, looking rather ravenous and about to seriously rifle through every cabinet and drawer.

"N-no!" She exclaimed, reaching out a hand in a sudden movement, then relaxing the arm and curling back her fingers when she saw that she had gained the mongoose's attention. "Wait... wait."

She dropped her hand, the other hand of hers held to the bulkhead just on the outside of the galley. Her brows knit, again in concern.

"Gosh, you must be hungry, considering... well, everything." She could only imagine what it was like, going a century or more without consuming sustenance - only possible in particular circumstances, as most life forms would die otherwise. She glanced over him, noting the manacles, then raising her eyes to the unfamiliar creature's face and stepping into the galley, motioning to his manacled wrists. "Let me help you? I can, you know, help... though I'm afraid we don't have a key for those. That I know of, that is."

Hal jumped at the sound of a voice, and he turned back to see Sindy there. "You're a girl," he said, sounding a bit surprised.

Immediately he straightened up, trying to look as dashing as possible while standing in what was probably her galley. "Sorry, er, that came out wrong, I mean..." he found himself stumbling over words.

Dang it, brain, just work!

Snapping out of it, the Nehantite started over. "What I mean is, I couldn't actually see any of you while we were on that other ship. Something's wrong with my eyes at the moment. Probably took a blow to the head by whoever put these on me." He held up his wrists. "But, yeah, starving. Haven't eaten since breakfast, and if there's anything you can do about these, you'd be lovely."

He paused, replayed his words, then corrected, "It'd be lovely! Not you. I mean, you look pretty nice as it is, but that's not what I meant when I said... oh, Garfife, this just hasn't been my day."

She didn't know whether to object (Of course i'm a girl!), laugh (for the fact that the Nehantite was tripping over his words) or blush, as she was wont to do whenever complemented, accidentally or on purpose, by the opposite sex (well, honestly, compliments were compliments and she blushed no matter the gender of the complimenter), regardless of species. Instead it just entirely caught her unawares, her cheeks pinked slightly and she focused rather intently on the manacles about Hal's wrists until it seemed he was going to stop talking. Then she forced herself to look up at him again, feeling about as awkward as he sounded.

"My..." She started, only to suddenly realise she'd lost whatever words she was going to say. Sindy drew in a short breath, counted to six, then let it out and the words came rushing back to her. "...my papa left me his lightsaber, when he passed. I was thinking that... I was thinking in the absence of any other suitable instrument, I could probably cut the chains, but I'd not want to cut the cuffs off because I'd probably cut more than I should in the process. And I'm afraid I lack any sort of medical training and..."

She stopped abruptly, realising her mouth was moving faster and faster and it was winding her up only more and more. And she was running out of air, which was evident as she gulped some in and smiled sheepishly, feeling now that she might be acting a bit rude. The pink hue crept further up her face.

"Sorry... I get flustered and I start talking and I forget to stop and breathe, it's silly, I know."

Hal's eyes brightened the moment the new girl mentioned the word "lightsaber."

"Heh, that's fine, I kinda do the same. Name's Hal, by the way, thanks for, uh, saving me, I guess," he said. Feeling more at ease, despite the gaping hole in his memory, the mongoose looked down at his paws, then back up to Sindy.

"Actually, a lightsaber might do the trick, and if you're worried about wielding it, I think I've got a plan," he continued, a smile growing up his muzzle. "If you can power it up, then lay it flat on the edge of the counter there and hold it in place, I'll maneuver my wrists around it. Should make things a bit easier, at least. And, sorry to hear about your dad. Depending on how long ago he passed, I might have known him. What was his name? And, for that matter, heh, what should I call you?"

That did it. The pink had started to consider subsiding, but at Hal giving his name and thus pointing her to the realisation that she hadn't so much as even thought to give hers, her eyes widened and she gnawed at her lower lip.

"Oh, sorry! My name! I never..." The fingers of her right hand curled at her mouth, as if she were about to eat them. Father would have scolded her. Papa would simply have subtly pointed out the fact much, much earlier. "I'm Siyndacha Aerin... but just call me Sindy." Then, almost as an afterthought: "That is, if you want, unless you think you can manage not to mangle my whole first name. Whatever's good."

She breathed, trying in the background of her thoughts to calm herself. Sindy dropped her hand to her side and the thoughts of her Papa caused the red in her cheeks to begin to recede and a distantly fond smile to come to her face.

"Papa was my mother's father. I really don't think you could have known him... but maybe my great-papa. Or my great-great-papa. Maybe even my great-great-great papa. It depends, really." She stopped for a slice of a second, then added: "...on how old you are and... well, honestly, that ship we found you on, all encumbered in carbonite - it's over a hundred years old, I never thought I'd see a vessel that old outside of a museum in half as good a shape as that one! - in any case, what member of the Aerin ancestry you're familiar with depends on those things."

For a little while, Hal thought he might be getting somewhere with Sindy. She was being quite friendly, and he had to admit that she ea pretty cute, though maybe a bit young for him. Telling the age of a non-furred species was so hard to do, and all.

But then came words which hit him like a succession of bricks to the skull.

Carbonite. Hundred years. Found. Museum. Ancestry.

His face looked like he'd just bee swatted on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, and he stuttered and stammered as he tried to find words.

"Woah, wait, wait, what? Carbonite? What?" was all he could manage, his brain going into extra-special-reserve-stupid mode from the shock of it all.